Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way, by
Emanuel Leutze, 1862.A classic allegory
of Jacksonian America and one of the most ambitious statements of Jacksonian
nationalism and empire building in the nineteenth century.Architect of the Capitol.

Homage to the Lower 48. By Robert Kaplan. Real Clear World, July 11, 2013.Kaplan:A
half-century ago, I was a little boy on a trip with my parents from New York
City to Cleveland, Ohio, to visit relatives. We crossed Pennsylvania on the
recently completed Pennsylvania Turnpike. Pennsylvania from the New Jersey
border to the Ohio border was vast, with the magnificent Alleghany range, a
subset of the Appalachians, in the broad middle of the state, heralded by the
Blue Mountain tunnel. The interstate highway system built under President
Dwight Eisenhower was gleaming and exotic back then, with lovely rest stops
with real restaurants where you were waited on at tables – not the slummy
fast-food joints that disgrace rest stops today.

At one
rest stop I picked up a collection of travel articles, written in easy Reader’s Digest style, suited for my
age. There was a story about a family driving west and stopping for breakfast
somewhere in Nebraska, anticipating the sight of the Rocky Mountains where they
were headed. “You have to earn the Rockies,” the father said, “by driving
through the flat Midwest.” Earn the
Rockies is a phrase that has stayed with me my whole life: It sums up
America’s continental geography – and by inference, why America is a world
power. It summed up my yearning to travel and see mountains even higher than
the Appalachians in Pennsylvania. Finally in 1970, when I was 18, I hitchhiked
across America from New York to Oregon and spent a summer roaming the Rocky
Mountains.

When my
family made that trip a half-century ago, Alaska and Hawaii were new states
admitted to the union only the year before. The United States now reached
halfway across the Pacific, and yet in 1960 it still thought of itself as a
continental nation, stretching from sea
to shining sea. Nevertheless, if you were a Hawaiian, you thought of the
continental United States as “the mainland.” And if you were an Alaskan, it was
“the lower 48.” The term lower 48 always rang a bell for me, signifying as it
did the contiguous 48 states that completed the temperate zone of North America
between Canada and Mexico. Arizona was the 48th state, admitted to the union
only in 1912. Until then, and throughout the 19th century, ever since the 1803
Louisiana Purchase, American presidents administered the West or parts of it as
imperial overlords: governing places as territories that were not as yet
states.

Indeed,
the entire operating myth of American nationhood has had an east-to-west
orientation. America’s continental geography was perfectly appointed for
gradual westering settlement. The original 13 colonies huddled around many
natural, deep-water Atlantic harbors, with the Appalachians as a western
boundary. Passes through the Appalachians enabled the pioneers to enter the
Midwest, where a flat panel of rich farmland – and the back-breaking labor
required for it to bear crops, and to clear the forests on it – ground down the
various North European immigrant communities into a distinctive American
culture. By the time the water-starved Great Plains and the Rockies beckoned
forth another generation of settlers, the Transcontinental Railroad was at hand
to complete the story of nation-building unto the Pacific.

Of
course, the Rockies emblemized this whole saga: their sheer beauty and majesty
helped make Americans feel that they were a special people, ordained to do
great things; the utter height of these mountains provided settlers with the
supreme logistical challenge. The Rockies are a signal example of how a
physical environment can mold a people's character.

In
fact, had the United States been settled from west to east, from California
directly into the water-starved tableland of Nevada and Arizona, it is possible
that the country would have begun as an oligarchy or some such authoritarian
regime, in order to strictly administer water rights. This is partly the
background to such great books of sea to
shining sea nationhood as Wallace Stegner’s Beyond the Hundredth Meridian (1954) and Marc Reisner’s Cadillac Desert (1986). In a larger
sense, the story of earning the Rockies is chronicled in such epics as Walter
Prescott Webb’s The Great Plains
(1931) and Bernard DeVoto’s lyrical trilogy of westward expansion, The Year of Decision: 1846(1943), Across the Wide Missouri (1947) and The Course of Empire (1952). DeVoto
wrote those books during World War II and some of the darkest days of the Cold
War. Yet, by concentrating on the Rocky Mountains and all that they
represented, he told Americans why they were great. DeVoto’s prose, like the
music of Stephen Foster – of which DeVoto writes about so eloquently – catches
at dead center the very energy of Manifest Destiny.

DeVoto,
repeating Henry David Thoreau’s dictum, advised Americans that, metaphorically,
they “must walk toward Oregon, and not toward Europe.” DeVoto never left North
America his whole life. He was not an isolationist but a geopolitical thinker
who understood the continental basis of American power.

That
continental basis is subtly shifting. I may be of the last generation that sees
the United States in terms of its east-to-west historic geography of Manifest
Destiny. Americans today do not take horses or trains, drive, ride buses or
hitchhike across the continent. They fly. Our airports have been the new bus
stations. Americans no longer experience the exhilaration of seeing the front
range of the Rockies after crossing the flat prairie and Great Plains. They
experience much less the regional diversity of the United States, as McDonald’s and Starbucks deface the urban landscape. Our towns and small cities
with their refreshing provincial aura have been transformed into vast, suburban
conurbations, each integrally connected to the global economy. Cosmopolitanism
is no longer restricted to the coasts. That is a good thing, even as something
special has been lost.

At the
same time, our southern border beckons more importantly than ever. The combined
populations of Mexico and Central America have risen to half that of the United
States and will go higher, as the average person south of the border is almost
a decade younger than the average American. While Mexican drug cartels partly
dominate substantial territory in northern Mexico, Mexico may be on its way to
becoming one of the world's top 10 economies, with plans by some in Mexico City
to connect more ports on the Atlantic and Pacific with more efficient road and
rail networks. Meanwhile, the widening of the Panama Canal within the next two
years may put a new economic emphasis on the Greater Caribbean, from America’s
Gulf Coast to northern South America. Latin history is certainly moving north,
as the destiny of North America goes from being east-to-west to north-to-south.

The
east-west, sea to shining sea world
of my childhood and youth was a world of the Industrial Age nation-state, with
all of its chill-up-your-spine myths. The north-south world will be one of
globalization, as the United States dissolves into a larger planetary
geography, where its epic pioneering past will be relevant only to the degree
it helps America compete economically.

The
lower 48 made Americans what they are – a people of the frontier, forever
seeking to earn the Rockies. The degree
to which Americans can spiritually hold on to that geography will help them
cross the new frontiers ahead.

Israel’s
military plans to downsize its conventional firepower such as tanks and
artillery to focus on countering threats from guerrilla warfare and to boost
its technological prowess, in a recognition that the Middle East turmoil has
virtually halted the ability of neighbors to invade for years to come. . . .

The
army plans to cut thousands of career officers, shut ground-force units,
eliminate air-force squadrons, and decommission naval ships over a period of
five years, said an Israeli army spokesman who declined to provide more
details….

Israeli
Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said in public remarks that the army plans to be
less dependent on heavy armaments. “In another few years we will see a
different” Israel Defense Forces, he said. “Wars of military versus military—in
the format we last met 40 years ago, in the Yom Kippur War—are becoming less
and less relevant.”

This
“sea change” will increase Israel’s qualitative superiority. In the 21st
century more than ever before, technology is becoming the most important
element of military power, not how many 18 year olds can you deploy. That’s a
big advantage for high-tech, low-population countries like Israel.

Here’s
a related thought: Secretary Kerry’s peace mission to Israel and Palestine is
in part based on the calculation that uncertainty and concerns about the
consequences of the Arab Spring for regional security (especially the
consequences of a more active Hezbollah) make Israel more amenable to US
pressure and suggestions. But this WSJ piece suggests a different calculation:
Israel’s defense establishment may actually feel that the effective destruction
of the Syrian Army, the internal struggles in Iraq, and the preoccupation with
domestic order in Egypt have neutralized the military power of Israel’s
neighbors.

If so,
Kerry may find it harder to trade US reassurances for Israeli concessions than
he expected.

A Peace Process on Hold. By Michael Gerson. Real Clear Politics, July 12, 2013. Also at the Washington Post.Gerson:The
Green Line — across which generations of Israelis and Palestinians have fought
and haggled — was given its name because U.N. mediator Ralph Bunche used a
green pencil to draw the cease-fire boundary in 1949. In the Middle East,
arbitrary markings can assume the geographic seriousness of mountain ranges.

The
last Israeli prime minister to try drawing outside the lines was Ehud Olmert,
who proposed a map in 2008 giving Palestinians control over 94 percent of the
occupied territories and half of Jerusalem, along with a plan for joint
custodianship of the holy places. “I thought it may bring an end to my
political career,” Olmert told me, “but I was determined to do it.”
Then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice observed that another Israeli prime
minister, Yitzhak Rabin, had been assassinated for less.

Now the
Obama administration — or at least Secretary of State John Kerry — is trying to
restart peace talks. So far, this has involved a process to produce a
formulation that would allow both sides to sit at the same table. If there is a
more substantive policy outcome in the works, it has been effectively hidden
from everyone but Kerry.

Israelis
of various political stripes admire Kerry’s dedication but wonder about this
timing. Recent Israeli elections were almost exclusively focused on
nation-building at home. Israel is in the midst of a tech-led economic boom.
Tel Aviv is a cross between Miami Beach and Palo Alto — and feels very distant
(though it isn’t by miles) from Gaza and the West Bank.

Israel
is also protecting its “villa in the jungle” (former prime minister Ehud
Barak’s description) more effectively than most thought possible. The vast
security wall is ugly but effective. The Iron Dome and other missile defense
systems have proved their worth. The result is the best security situation in
Israel’s history. This is a tribute to Israel’s extraordinary talent for
improvisation. But it has encouraged an Iron Dome mentality, in which every
national problem appears to have a technical solution. Many Israelis seem
content to manage conflict rather than resolve it through negotiations.

The
arguments for Israel to define its borders through a two-state settlement
remain strong. “Given the history and heritage of the Jewish people,” Olmert
says, “we can’t occupy forever 3 or 4 or 5 million people without equal
rights.” An agreement, he argues, would increase Israeli legitimacy, open
global markets and make a Jewish state more demographically sustainable.

But
these arguments seem abstract and long-term compared with the pleasures of life
in the villa. The majority of Israelis vaguely support a two-state solution,
but there is no critical mass of political support for concessions in that
cause. And Israel’s current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, doesn’t seem
inclined to follow the Olmert model of leadership and unexpected generosity
from a position of Israeli strength.

On the
Palestinian side, the need for a two-state solution is acute because the
current quasi-state, the Palestinian Authority (PA), is a shell, dependent on
outside donations to function. (The day before I visited Ramallah, the
Palestinian administrative center, gas stations began denying PA security
vehicles fuel for lack of payment.) Given Israeli settlement activity and
general Palestinian distrust for Netanyahu, confidence in a negotiated solution
is low. But the alternative that is gaining some traction among some
Palestinian leaders — a unilateral effort to gain recognition from the United
Nations — would cause both the United States and Israel to (once again) cut the
flow of outside donations to the PA, risking its total collapse.

Several
Palestinian leaders have sufficient strength to undermine each other. The
question is whether any Palestinian leader is strong enough to deliver on a
peace agreement. Hamas, meanwhile, seems content to retain control of Gaza and
hold out for a return to Israel’s 1948 borders — meaning no Israel at all. And
surrounding Arab nations, which might be expected to lend a hand in the peace
process, are either distracted by regional chaos or engulfed in it.

The
result is the Middle East at its most frustrating. Majorities of Israelis and Palestinians support a two-state solution. The broad parameters of a deal have
been clear since the Clinton administration (though the details are
devil-filled). The American secretary of state is energetically on the job. But
little is likely to change.

Egypt’s Missing Precondition. By Iain Murray. The American Spectator, July 12, 2013.Murray:It is
commonplace today to regard liberty and democracy as inextricably correlated —
if you have one, you must have the other. Yet as Egypt and other failed
democracies are showing, that is not the case. Indeed, we are rediscovering
some fundamental truths that the American Founders knew — that liberty is an
essential precondition for sustainable democracy and that there is more to
democracy than majority rule.

We
often forget that the Arab Spring was brought about not by an unquenchable
thirst for democracy, but by restraints on trade. The self-immolation of street
vendor Mohamed Bouazizi in front of the Tunisian parliament that set off the
Arab Spring was caused not by a desire for a vote in who should rule that
country, but because of the repeated confiscation of his wares by local police,
culminating in the confiscation of his scales. His last words were, “How is a
man to make a living?”

As Tom
Palmer of the Atlas Network notes, this basic plea for human dignity
reverberated around the Arab world. The Egyptian wing of the protests blew up
particularly over police brutality.

A
little over two years on, the autocratic Hosni Mubarak has been overthrown, but
the solution of “democracy” appears to have solved none of Egypt’s problems.
Farida Makar of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies told Deutsche
Welle in February, “[T]orture still happens in police stations… excessive
violence is still used against demonstrators and… everything is decided
according to a security mentality.”

Now
many are asking, “What went wrong?” A more apt query is, “What hasn’t gone on?” In the case of Egypt,
plenty.

Magna
Carta, the foundation of English rights, tackled these problems long before
democracy was established in England. In 1215, King John promised that if a man
were to be fined, the tools of his trade would not be taken away. He also
promised not to imprison anyone save by the judgment of 12 of his peers. These
two provisions laid the foundation for the law’s respect of the dignity of England’s
common man — what we now call the “institutions of liberty.”

Other
institutions of liberty of liberty followed, some springing from Magna Carta,
others won by a distinctly undemocratic Parliament. These included the rule of
law, an independent judiciary, enforceable contracts, free markets, property
rights, and many others.

The
recognition of these institutions was essential in the growth of England’s
economy. A similar phenomenon occurred in Holland, and these two countries led
the way in the creation of a modern economy based around what economic
historian Deirdre McCluskey calls “bourgeois dignity.”

These
are the institutions that the American Founders inherited. Indeed, the American
Revolution was fought not to remake society, but to preserve these rights from a King who seemed determined to abrogate
them. One of the complaints articulated in the Declaration of Independence was
a condemnation of arbitrary bureaucracy: “He has erected a Multitude of new
Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out
their Substance.” In other words, “How is a man to make a living?”

The
Founders, however, were wary of democracy. In Federalist Number 10, Alexander
Hamilton warned against it:

A pure
democracy can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or
interest will be felt by a majority, and there is nothing to check the
inducements to sacrifice the weaker party. Hence it is, that democracies have
ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property;
and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in
their deaths.

This
phenomenon, which the great classical liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill
called “the tyranny of the majority,” is what has been at issue in Egypt. A
new, democratically elected government without a foundation in the institutions
of liberty showed no inclination to obtain or rule according to them.

Democracy
as we know it took centuries to establish not only in Britain, but also in the
relatively young United States, where such illiberal institutions as slavery
and the denial of the vote to the unpropertied and women took a long time to
overcome. However, it was the institutions of liberty that provided the
foundation on which democracy and equal rights for all could be built.

Egypt
has underlined this lesson. It has shown us one undeniable truth: The
institutions of liberty are more important than the trappings of democracy.

Two Males, No Men. By Daniel J. Flynn. The American Spectator, July 12, 2013.Zimmerman, Trayvon, and Manliness. By Rush Limbaugh. RushLimbaugh.com, July 12, 2013.Flynn:They
don’t make men like they used to. One can consult a Danish study that shows
plummeting testosterone levels for scientific confirmation of this. Or, one
could more easily turn on any cable news network’s wall-to-wall coverage of the
Zimmerman-Martin case, a tragedy involving two males fumbling in the dark on
how to be men.

Whatever
the protagonists may be guilty of they are surely innocent of being men. The
six female jurors, not tasked to reach a verdict on the manhood of the central
players, nevertheless know the truth of this more than other trial observers.
The Venusians know the Martians better than they know themselves. And vice
versa — what do they know of x chromosomes who only x chromosomes know?

On the
maturity count, Trayvon Martin might reasonably plead not guilty by reason of
chronology. Seventeen-year-old boys quite often act like, in the vernacular of
Zimmerman, “f—-ing punks.” Most grow out of it, but Mr. Martin unfortunately
will not get that chance. Rarely, in spite of their exaggerated masculine
posturing, do teenage boys behave as mature males.

Martin’s
Twitter feed reads as a parody of poor grammar and an even more impoverished
vocabulary. There, he’s a “No Limit N-gga,” girls he knows are “bitches” and
“hoes,” and the primary extracurricular activity he immerses himself in is
marijuana. The gold-teeth smile, the tattoos, the ten-day suspension from
school, and all the rest appear as pathetic attempts to assert his virility.
Yet, as his supporters point out, Trayvon also liked Skittles and Chuck E.
Cheese’s. The presentation that Trayvon affected and the Trayvon that his
supporters present are, like so many making the journey from adolescence to
adulthood, at war internally.

George
Zimmerman, in contrast, projects a courtroom image of a meek pudgeball who
wouldn’t (couldn’t?) hurt a fly — and not in a Norman Bates way. Perhaps this
is the effect that his lawyers intended. But it jibes with what we know.
According to one unidentified witness, Zimmerman endured a domineering mother’s
frequent beatings and a docile father who failed to stick up for his kids. His
mixed-martial arts instructor described him as “physically soft,” a student who
lacked athleticism and “didn’t know how to really effectively punch.”

One
wonders if the cage-fighting classes, the pursuit of a career in law
enforcement, and a firearm kept ready to fire were Zimmerman’s ways of
discovering his elusive manhood in a manner akin to Trayvon’s tattoos, coarse
language, and demonstrative drug use. With the teenager sans a father in the
home to serve as guide, and the neighborhood-watch captain growing up watching
the cowed captain of his home, the pair’s past altered their future as much as
anything else did.

Zimmerman’s
screams and Trayvon slamming Zimmerman’s head into the concrete weren’t the
acts of men. A man is neither a woman nor an animal. The proper response to an
assault by a 158-pound teenager isn’t to scream for help or grab for a gun. It
is to punch back or better yet subdue and issue a spanking. And a sucker punch,
the repeated hitting of a downed opponent, and the bashing of a skull against
the concrete doesn’t pass muster with the Marquess of Queensberry. Perhaps the
“No Holds Barred Fighting” dojo that Zimmerman had signed up for would approve.

Their
households lacked strong male role models; their society, even more so. Four in
ten American kids enter the world without their father married to their mother.
When schoolboys begin to exhibit traits natural to their sex, the energetic
fellows earn the wrath of detention and Ritalin. Any game that highlights
contact — from dodgeball to football — comes under attack. Primetime television
celebrates the fop and makes a buffoon out of fathers (see Simpson, Homer;
Everybody Loves, Raymond). Jobs relying on the physical characteristics favored
in males have been outsourced to robots and foreigners. When a pundit asked
“Are Men Necessary?” a few years back it reflected the scarcity rather than the
superfluity of the genuine article.

Civilizing
men out of existence has come at great cost to civilization. Instead of men, we
get feminine imitations lacking beauty. We get lost boys compensating by
becoming barbarians. We get Sanford, Florida, February 26, 2012.